1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power control apparatus of a public telecommunication terminal, and more particularly, to a power control apparatus of a public telecommunication terminal which makes the public telecommunication terminal (e.g., a public telephone) disposed in every place provided with a power control program so that the public telecommunication terminal itself can turn on/off the power supplied thereto in an automatic way.
In addition, the present invention relates to a power control apparatus of a public telecommunication terminal which enables a power control program embedded therein to be updated by a remote server in a remote place.
2. Background of the Related Art
With drastic change and development of information communication, there is provided an advanced communication network on which a high speed Internet is carried out, and in correspondence thereto, in recent years many pieces of equipment with various kinds of functions have been developed and proposed.
Among them, a multimedia public telecommunication terminal having various functions as a telephone, a facsimile, a video communication, Internet and the like has emerged. In addition to the function as a public telephone, the multimedia public telecommunication terminal is capable of having functions of implementing video communication and sending documents such as by facsimile. Moreover, it can realize the internal connection, the transmission of electronic mail and the supply of all kinds of contents, like computer communication. Therefore, a user can be provided with the information he or she desires in an effective way from the multimedia public telecommunication terminal.
When compared to a conventionally used ordinary public telephone, however, the multimedia public telecommunication terminal is operated with relatively high power consumption and is not capable of preventing the life of all kinds of parts (e.g., a crystal liquid display) from being shortened due to the continuous operation with the result that the reliability of the product unavoidably deteriorates.
To solve this problem, the supply of electric power to the public telecommunication terminal with the multimedia functions is cut off during a predetermined period of time (for example, when the use rate is very low or after business is closed or overnight).
However, the known manner of controlling the power in the public telecommunication terminal has some disadvantages as mentioned below.
In order to cut off the supply of power or release the cut-off state of the power supply in the public telecommunication terminal, a person should visit all of the public telecommunication terminals he supervises in every place, thereby making it difficult to supervise each of the public telecommunication terminals in an effective fashion.
Moreover, the known power control procedures require much time and personal labor, which causes additional expenses.